


a growing vine.

by Teleportation_Magic



Series: Black Clover Soulmate AU [1]
Category: Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Gen, It's Noelle when she's a baby, Light Angst, so she has some stuff to deal with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:35:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29214264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teleportation_Magic/pseuds/Teleportation_Magic
Summary: When Noelle is four, her soulmark is a wish and a hope and a dream for someone, anyone.When Noelle is six, her dreams die an ignoble death in a small church with far too many vines to be anything she could belong to.(When she is fifteen, they come true.)
Relationships: Asta & Noelle Silva
Series: Black Clover Soulmate AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2144937
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	a growing vine.

When Noelle is four, her hand finally lights up.

It’s a delicate blue colour, and she thinks it’s so, so pretty. She dabs it gently with her finger, and the light pushes it’s way around, bathing her hand with a cool, calm, glow.

It’s so bright. It’s almost blinding if she looks at it for too long.

Nebra and Solid tell Nozel. Noelle knows she’s supposed to cover it - everyone else does! But she likes it, she likes the little blot of colour so much.

“That is not how royalty is supposed to comport themselves.” Nozel hisses. “Don’t be vulgur.”

So she keeps her gloves on. But most the times when she’s alone in her bedroom, legs curled up against her chest, she takes the gloves off and looks at the gentle blue light, and she cannot wait for the Animea ball, so that she can finally find the other person with the same blue light.

When Noelle is five she attends the first ball.

Mirrors line all the walls of the ballroom and the tables have silk white table clothes that reach all the way down. This is the one day she’s allowed to take her gloves off, the one day she can show everyone the blinding blue.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Mimosa pulling a member of the Lunnettes family away. Kirsch is grinning, praising his sister and her “impeccable taste, really.”

Her heart sinks, and she looks back at Nebra and Solid. They both have incomplete marks too, Nebra‘s a warm brown and Solid’s a light pink. Nozel doesn’t look at them like her does her, like no matter who she finds, they’ll never be good enough.

He got Fuegoleon. None of them could beat him.

Still, Noelle looks. There is the Roselai heiress, and her mark is a bright green. The Vaude heir has a dark violet. She almost thinks that Becquerel might match her, but the colour is too deep a blue, when they put their hands together. She gives her a half-disappointed smile, before turning on her heel.

Noelle looked and looked and looked, and even at the end of the night, when the Vermillions were inviting the Lunettes in for a meal, Noelle was left trailing after Nozel with a blinding light.

“Put your gloves on.” She fumbled a second with them before they slid on, smooth and softly.

“You know Noelle, it’s almost a good thing that you didn’t find them.” Nebra sneered and Noelle couldn’t help bring her shoulders past her ears. “If you could pump out even more mana, I’m sure your abyssal control would get even worse.”

Solid sniggered behind them. She tucked herself into the side of the hallway, until she could finally take off to her room.

She threw her gloves off and stared at the bright blue. She’d hoped -

Well. That’d been stupid.

She slept, her hands baked into fists, and dreamt about a stranger who came to live in the castle, someone who’d show all her brothers and sister, someone who’d hug her and kiss her gently on her forehead, and when she woke up, she couldn’t stop the hot tears on her face.

She collected herself.

Eventually.

She was royalty, after all. She had to.

When she was six, she had her first dream.

She had been so excited for it, for so long. She’d been waiting and waiting and waiting and -

Well. She supposed it didn’t matter now.

She’d seen a small church, nothing like the one near the castle with its stained glass and mahogany seats, and it’d been so run down. There were vines growing up the side, and the wood creaked, and the people wore old, tattered clothes.

They seemed to be in an orphanage, and among all the jumping around, everything entered around a child as old as her, with a stained white shirt and a missing tooth. Her waved at her, his grey hair wild and unkept, and she felt her stomach roll.

He didn’t have a soulmark. He wasn’t like the other children there, who had at least a dull glow - there was nothing on his hand.

She woke up, then. She rolled out of bed and stumbled to the toilet, were she vomited.

Nozel couldn’t know. Nobody could know - she had a peasant as a soulmate.

She was a royal and she didn’t even have a matching soulmark, cause apparently her mate had no mana at all.

This was - she could ignore it. This was a weird quirk of fate - maybe punishment for killing her mother, for taking away Mereoleona-sama’s soulmate. This was payback - since she couldn’t have a soulmate because of Noelle, Noelle wouldn’t get one either.

She could never ever tell Nozel.

The Animea ball was still held every year, and every year, Noelle felt like a imposter, hanging around people with whom she had nothing in common. She still had to go and to try to find her match, but she hung to the back, and only moved around when Nozel or Nebra or Solid looked for her. She shouldn’t waste everybody’s time.

When she went to sleep that night, she kept her gloves on. She hadn’t tried to look at it for years. The blue seemed to be mocking, now.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t –

Her pillow holds so many screams, she thinks later, when her eyes feel swollen and red. He throat aches like an open wound, and it wasn’t, she thought, fair.

She rolled over quietly, and tried to put all the thoughts out of her mind. She didn’t have a choice. Better not to dwell.

Nozel had eventually, asked her if she had a dream yet.

She lied, tugging at the hem of her gloves. HE seemed almost entirely apathetic, with the exception of a small twitch of disappointment before he dismissed her.

“When - if - you do, inform me.”

She’d nodded and turned.

Solid thought that it was a sign of immaturity that she hadn’t had hers yet. He had found his - some noble girl who occasionally came to the castle. They were set to get married in six months, some time after Solid got his grimoire.

Nebra says that she hasn’t seen hers yet either. That she’d thought she’d had her dream, but it actually just a normal dream. Noelle didn’t understand how you could confuse the two, but maybe that’s how normal soulmate dreams worked.

She hadn’t forgotten hers. The details might have blurred away, but she remembered what was most important - that he was a peasant.

(Some nights she wondered about him - about his grey hair, his missing tooth, his bright green eyes. Some nights she wishes that she could forget.)

Her grimoire is a disappointment. It is thin, too thin, and as much as she expected the blue, she wishes it was anything else. It’s too close the soulmark, tucked away under her gloves.

She tried training with her grimoire. It doesn’t make anything easier. If anything, casting spells are more difficult now that her mana flows more easily.

Yet another reason to never meet her soulmate.

When she falls, she falls limply.

She can see the trees from her vantage point, far above the Black Bulls base. She sees the lines of destruction she etched into the landscape, the water that continues to soak her skin and Asta’s and she finally decides that she’d gone this far, and no further.

Then she’s saved. She doesn’t expect it really, and parts of her wishes they hadn’t, but it’d be ungrateful to say so. She hears, then the voices of everyone, and she wants to disappear.

She couldn’t go any further. She was done, done with the squad and being a magic knight, done trying everything and failing again and again and again -

“Your magic, it’s really cool!”

Her head snaps up. The peasant boy is grinning like he’s not a care in the world, like she hadn’t almost killed him.

“I’m really jealous, I don’t have any magic at all.”

None at all? Nothing?

(Nothing? Some distant memory asks, and she ignores it unceremoniously.)

“You were really worried about all that?” The boy with the weird purple hair said. “We’re a whole team of failures, you’ll fit right in!”

And one boy challenges her, and child in the front encouraged her, and the girl who could control string magic promised to help her out -

It was all she could do to keep from crying.

“So what d’ya say?”

And she swallowed down a final sob, before taking his hand, and climbing to her feet. And in that moment, something began whirling around her brain, something unbelievable and impossible, and really really simple –

It didn’t matter here, if she failed. It wouldn’t matter if she couldn’t be who she was supposed to be. She could loose control, she could have one spell, she could have a peasant soulmate and it still wouldn’t matter – she would still be a Black Bull.

Maybe. Maybe she might find something here. (and maybe – no. But maybe…?)

She walks back to the base, and the conversation floats around her, and for the first time she isn’t separate, she isn’t set aside as the faulty one.

(She’d wanted her family to acknowledge her for so long. But here –

No.

Maybe.)

She, luckily, gets paired up with Asta on all her missions. She doesn't like it because it's him, but rather because everyone else in the guild was some level of insane so he was easily the most understandable person there.

(It's an odd sort an adjustment, she has to admit. Part of her wants to be simple and sniping, but the rest of her is almost overwhelmed in the simple way he trades remarks with her, the way that Vanessa drapes an arm around her shoulders, the way that no one else feels the need to have gloves on.)

Him being there is useful in the broadest of strokes, when Luck waltzes off. It's not so useful when they're trying to navigate down what might be the darkest hallway she's ever been in, but well. There was nothing she could do.

Well. There was. Her mark was - it was bright, if nothing else.

But he was _right there_.

In fairness, he wasn't wearing gloves either. She'd spotted a patch of green before she'd averted his eyes, and everyone looked at her like _she_ was the weird one! Imagine that!

"Can you look away?" She blurted out, and she nearly cringed.

"Alright then! Wait, why?"

"Don't look!" She stressed, before pulling her gloves off. The hallway was slowly bathed blue, and he looked around, blinking at it.

"Wow!" He gushed, turning to her "that's is such a pretty spell!"

She squeaks, and curls her hand into her chest. The light is snuffed, suddenly, and his "Awwww!" echoes through the room.

"I told you not to look!" She stresses, and she hears him shuffling around.

"Sorry!" And they can see again. They wander forward, an she stays a foot or two behind him. "Why can't I see?"

"Because it's not a spell, idiot. It's my soulmark."

"I still don't get it!" He said, and she wanted to hit him.

"I can't - it's my soulmark. I can't just show anyone who looks." He might not get it - his hand was out for anyone to see. She went to her wrist reflexively but - right. Her gloves weren't there.

"If you say so." He shrugged, and they continued down. It was comforting, tugging them back on.

Things click, one by one.

First is his eyes, dully familiar. Next is the Sister he keeps talking about - she remembers a Sister Lily, faintly, even if from where is difficult to place. Last is the boy they meet in the dungeon. She’s met him before, she’s sure of it, and the only peasants she remembers are from her dream.

It’s an odd moment, when she finally puts all the pieces together, looking at his wild hair as he jumps after the diamond monstrosity that has almost killed her.

She wants to ask him for a look at his hand right there. But there is no time – Mimosa is hunched over her, trying to weave her flesh together, while Asta is trying to slay a monster. And she isn’t sure what happens, exactly, after he takes her magic, but they’re maneuvering their way out, safely, and she knows Yuno, she does, from the orphanage. From his orphanage.

The realization is like a lighting bolt to her system, in retrospect. But there is no time for lightening when the world is coming down.

She doesn’t tell him when he wakes up – there are too many people.

She doesn’t tell him either when they get back, since they’re almost immediately going back to the capital. And there is no time at the capital either – and then Solid empties a glass of punch over her head.

It’s a reminder. It’s a warning. And Asta barrels through them both like they’re made out of tissue.

It shouldn’t be surprising, not really – he doesn’t belong to their world. He wouldn’t know what the costs are, besides.

She doesn’t correct him, though. She should – she knows that he could die – that Nebra might not but Solid would and there are all the other magic knights too -

But Asta doesn’t stop. He breaks and bends and forces all of them into a standstill. Solid falls onto his knee, and Nebra’s magic is useless, and the sand golem falls apart with a single stroke.

And Asta still stands. And Noelle hopes for a moment.

And then Nozel is there, and he is elegance and precision and sheer uncompromising strength, and Noelle can barely breath over her jackrabbiting heart –

But things don’t go wrong and Asta stays alive, and Noelle has to go because the world is burning down, and there aren’t enough people to stop it.

And it serves as a reminder that even though her soulmate doesn’t have a drop of mana to him, that he is still more useful that her, more able to save these people than she is –

And she is reminded. Reminded of Saussy village, reminded of the little girl that needed help, and how Noelle was the only one who could provide it, and how there is another little girl, right here, who’s in the exact same place.

And Fuegoloean, Nozel’s soulmate, believes in her. He thinks she can help. And she has – she might not be able to stand up to Solid or Nebra or Nozel, she might have absolutely no control, but she can make sure this one little girl doesn’t die.

So she does.

And they live.

After that, they finally return home. They are lucky Charmy sneaked in with them – her magic makes them both flying carpets, and they float towards their base. And Noelle knows that Charmy’s right there but she’s probably not listening anyways, and she asks: “Do you have a soulmate?”

Asta doesn’t have a soulmark, so maybe its arrogant. But he turns to her with a grin, and says “Yeah!”

His hand flips over. She almost looks away on impulse, but she forces herself to focus. There, etched into the soft part of his wrist, is a beautiful pair of swords in a bright green. It’s unclear whether they’re clashing or simply laying next to each other, but he grins at it, all the same. 

“It’s with Yuno.”

“The wind user? Your friend?”

“Yeah.”

And there grows some small bit of doubt. sure, he could have two soulmates, but the odds that he does are slim. She thinks, for a second, that he might be the wrong one, before he flashes another grin at her “There’s another one which I haven’t found!”

“Really?”

And the boy grins, wide and carefree. “Yeah. They’re royalty or nobility. Something high ranking.” Noelle almost spoke for a second, before he continued “Can you help me find them?”

Her brain goes blank for a moment, before resetting almost brutally.

“Find them?” Noelle shrieked. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know where they are!” He replies. “Sister Lily told me if they hadn’t come by now, they probably wouldn’t come, and that some royals were weird about having a peasant soulmate.”

Did he not realize? But it was more likely that she’d been right. She miscalculated. But she still wanted to help him. “What can you tell me?”

“She had two braids,” he says and there is the lightning again, “And she was surrounded with these really high arches, I guess? And there were three other kids, but I can’t really remembered what they looked like – but they were assholes. And - ” and he feels the lightening too, for a moment, before she swallows, and words spill out of her lips.

“Asta.” And her mouth is dry. She remembers the Animea ball, where she fails to match again and again and again, and that was never this stressful. She thinks, for a moment, she might not ask, that she might wait for him to. But she has to – she wants to be the one to - “Can you… can I… I haven’t found mine either.”

“You haven’t?” He says, a grin spreading across his face before he shoves his hand in front of her.

And Noelle takes her glove off, slowly, the bright blue glow spilling out and intermingling with the sunlight. She swallows, her nerves tied up in her belly, and takes his hand.

And her palm is warm. The bright blue light pulses once, before going out, and when she pulls her hand away, there is a light blue vine, wrapped around itself, reaching up, looking like the still mark might grow up her palm.

Her mind is numb.

Asta is hugging her.

“You’re my soulmate!”

And she thinks to tell him to get off, but there is the bright blue mark on her palm, and her heart thrums with a sort of satisfaction.

“You’re my soulmate.” She breaths, quietly. She hadn’t expected she’d find him. She hadn’t expected it to be lovely.

And she clutches her hand close to her, and when they arrive at the Black Bulls base, there is no need for her to put her gloves on.

“Noelle’s my soulmate!” Asta screams, and shes pressed into the fold of the people, who, if only in the darkest depths of her mind, she can dub her family. And they celebrate – the marking is joyful and happy and carefree, and her heart feels near to the bursting.

There is, she thinks, no need to hide it. And she lets the hands on her palm glow as they party into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> kinda basic ngl, but i wanted to write something cute for my favorite character. And while it can be read as pre-relationship, its supposed to be gen.


End file.
